Posts Tagged ‘Lee Grant’

OK well maybe not so much. I know I’m not posting anything these days and partially this is because I’m a bit over it, too busy and I think the blog was really aimed at tracking my own progress with my studies, which now thankfully is finished, approved and done. Also, I want to spend less time blogging and writing about photography and actually make them instead! And like most people I have to earn a living so making work is (out of necessity) squeezed in between everything else that is going on. Anyway, I do have a future online project being planned so keep an eye out and I shall make a final post here later in the year to notify everyone, before finally putting this blog to sleep.

In the meantime there are a few things worth blogging about. Firstly, my friend Andy Adams over at Flak Photo is running a promotion month for Hijacked 2 which is currently touring Australia as an exhibition. You can also buy the book which I can highly recommend – it will be money well spent, rest assured. You can check it out at Andy’s website or on Facebook here. Or better go see the exhibition or attend a launch party. Dates and venues are:

Also, I’m heading down to Melbourne tomorrow to attend the opening of the Bowness Photography Prize at the MGA, in which I am a finalist with the following image. So attention Melbournites, make it out to the Gallery for a beer and some great photography!

Another little gem discovered recently is the work of Ketaki Sheth, an Indian photographer who is currently showing work at the Photo Ink gallery in New Delhi, India. Her series “Twinspotting” is terrific and definitely worth a look. If you can spare the very low price of $20, you can buy the book at The Book Depository here.

Lastly, please help support a very worthwhile project over at Kickstarter by Marc McAndrews. I posted about Marc’s new series Nevada Rose a little while back and he is now working on publishing the book for release next year. But as we all know, the world of self-publishing is still expensive (especially if you want to do it well) and Marc is looking for backers to help him with the scanning costs. Every dollar will help and he only has till October to raise the funds. So get your altruistic hat on and support a fellow photographer. It’ll come back to you eventually and if you commit to $125, you’ll actually get a signed copy of a first edition book, definitely a good investment and a quick turnaround on a good deed.

Well, it certainly has been a while since I bothered posting about my ruminations on photography…. but you know, life gets busy and I figure there’s no point feeling like a slave to technology, particularly if there’s nothing much to be said. Not that this has been the case overall, and certainly the proverbial shitload has been going on, but you know…. I got a bit lazy and like I said, a lot’s been happening.

So what have I missed blogging about worth mentioning? Let’s see…. FotoFreo where I went to finally meet many e-buddies such as Andy Adams (Flak Photo), Mark McPherson (Big City Press), Rebecca Dagnall and Stacy Merfhar (both fab photographers), and where I also got to hang out with Amy Stein, Carry Levy, Jon Levy (no relation to Carry though, Jon runs Foto 8 in London), Brad Rimmer, Graham Miller (whose work I’ve posted about before and you couldn’t meet a nicer person), Sohrab Hura, Narelle Autio and many others. I also had the good fortune to be selected to participate in a Magnum workshop with Trent Parke, plus see a load of photo-shows and talks. In a word…. awesome experiences with a bunch of very interesting and lovely people. I could rattle on about how much fun I had but that would be boring. Suffice to say that the photo-community seems to me at least, to be a fun one. At least no one glazes over when you bang on and on about photography! I highly recommend photo festivals and am looking forward to one day getting over to the big ones in the US and Europe.

The National Portrait prize, in which I have a work is now traveling. The opening at the NPG was kinda fun. My mum was very funny and harassed the NPG photographer to track me down in order to photograph me in front of my work. Mums… what can I say!?😉 My work hung next to Ingvar Kenne‘s portrait of Alexis Wright, which was nice, as we are fans of each other’s work. Ingvar was last year’s winner, a judge in the Sony comp I won last year and another super nice bloke. He also features in Hijacked 2(see below).

But most importantly (big drumroll please), I finally submitted my thesis. Yay for me! Only took me 5 years and I’ve actually still got one week to go as my assessment is next Wednesday morning with the exhibition opening in the evening. So if you happen to be in Canberra and near the ANU School of Art, please do come along.

Let me tell you, I’m very glad I’m about finished. Definitely looking forward to making some new work and am hatching a few deadlines to keep me going (one of the good things about studying is the deadlines – forces you to reach goals!)

And, I also got back from a weekend in fabulous Sydney where I visited for the launch of the Hijacked 2 book and exhibition. The book, I must say looks fantastic, and Mark, Ute and Markus – as well as all their creative team – have done a fabulous job putting it together. I’m rather proud to be a part of it, I must say.

If you’re in Sydney come and check it out, otherwise it will be travelling to Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. Oh and go buy the book, arriving on shore late this month.

I also bought Derek Henderson‘s monograph Mercy Mercer. Absolutely stunning book and I highly recommend this incredible photographer. Derek shoots 8×10″ large format in a style reminiscent of Alec Soth‘s but there’s something unique about Derek’s work. It’s imbued with a lyricism and rawness belonging to another world, (actually New Zealand). One of my favourite purchases this year.

Anyway, going forward, I’m not sure what’s going to happen with this blog. It’s actually now archived with the National Library of Australia and in perpetuity even – which is kind of nice – so even if I do hang it up, any of you interested readers out there can still access old stuff via the NLA Pandora archive. I won’t ride off into the sunset just yet, but will take my time coming back into the blogosphere. Will keep you posted no doubt…. that’s if any of you are even still there!?

I’ve got some work up in a group show called Hip Pop, United Galleries‘ annual charity show. It’s showing in the Saatchi & Saatchi foyer at the Rocks, so go check it out if you are in Sydney (also check out the view of the Opera House from the window… fantastic!) It’s a mixed media show and I’m one of three photographers, the other two being Stephen Dupont and Ben Ali Ong. The exhibition runs through until the 27th November. There’s also an interview I did with Happenstance Magazine that’s posted on their blog.

OK, so the quiet on this front is not because I have ceased writing this blog but because I get nearer to D-Day everyday and I still have the proverbial shitload of work to do…. but I couldn’t resist posting my pick of the Critical Mass 09 entrants – all 575 of them whose entries (including yours truly) arrived neatly packaged on a CD all the way from the USandA. Don’t worry I definitely won’t be posting all 575! Just 15 of my faves… and yes, I went through all 575 of them!! And despite the overall caliber being pretty good (some of it a little repetitive and honestly, some of it pretty bad) my favourites belonged to the following photographers and really appealed to my aesthetic sensibilities….

One interesting observation is the number of works that explore ideas of belonging and connection to place (similar themes to my work in Belco). Maybe this is a reflection of my Generation (X) and the fact that we are all nearing the big 40….? Mortality inevitably looms and we start to think about how we fit in the big jigsaw that is our crazy, beautiful world…. and what better place to start than where we grew up? Odes to origins…. yeah….

And other than fellow photographer and e-buddy Rebecca Dagnall, I think I was the only Aussie! The submissions were mostly from Americans but it was peppered with some interesting work from Canada, Europe and South America. It’ll be interesting to see who makes the final Top 50….

Today was a good day at work. Firstly because I was late (which makes the day shorter) and secondly because I had a long lunch, which I don’t usually do. The lunch was had with the lovely Anne O’Hehir (NGA Assistant Curator of Photography) and with Sydney based gallerists, Mary Meyer and her lovely husband and photographer, Bob (who run Meyer Gallery in Darlinghurst). We ended up giving them a whirlwind tour of our photography collection in storage. And this is where we looked at the work of Eliot Porter, who I’m amazed I’d not heard of before (OK, OK I’m not really a landscape photographer!). The Getty Centre had a show of Porter’s work in 2006 called In the Realm of Nature. Here is their blurb:

American photographer Eliot Porter was among the first to successfully bridge the gap between photography as a fine art and its roots in science and technology. Porter promoted the use of color photography from the 1940s until the mid-1970s, a time when most serious photographers worked in black and white. Porter’s work was widely published and used as a powerful visual argument for nature conservation. He explored new ways of presenting the natural world and his artistic and technical contributions to bird and landscape photography transformed these genres.

The work is simply…. exquisite. They are dye transfer prints, a process that William Eggleston would later use extensively and brilliantly. However it was Porter who would use it first with his incredibly delicate images of nature (some calling him the true ‘father of colour photography’… Mmm, not so much Eggleston?). Here are some images, which I have to point out are quite poor, web reproductions and really don’t do the works justice. The prints in the NGA collection (part of a portfolio edition of only 250), are, in a word…. stunning.

Aspens by Lake, Pike National Forest, Colorado, September 14, 1959

Looking South Over Upper Cascade Lake, near Keene, Adirondack Mountains, New York, February 1, 1965

It’s too bad that this process no longer exists. I know there are a few people who still use it, making their own chemistry…. I wonder what the contemporary alternative to dye transfer prints would be?

These images are some more of Porter’s that I found online and really love, though we don’t have them in the NGA collection unfortunately. Too bad cos it would be divine to see them in all their dye transfer glory……

Peeling Birch Bark, Great Spruce Head Island, Maine, June 24, 1969

Rose Petals on Beach, Great Spruce Head Island, Maine, July 1, 1971

Crab Legs Left by Crows, Great Spruce Head Island, Maine, July 17, 1949

Note the date on the last photograph… 1949 people!!! Looking at these works also affirmed that large format is the direction I want to take my work (Porter’s prints are 8×10″ contacts). I’m completely excited about new ideas (very different to my usual work) that I’m developing for after my studies, though at this point (mostly for financial reasons) I’ll stick with the 4×5! Baby steps right…

Lastly, I have some work in a group show called Surfacing at the new Belconnen Arts Centre. Quite appropriate as it’s a selection of four images from my Belco series, interestingly no portraits. Anyway, if you’re in town and want to check out our brand spanking new gallery, come along.

Oh, except I have to mention that you can’t come to the opening unless you get an invite from the Centre directly… To those I spammed with an invite, my sincere apologies. I got into trouble after the Director got wind that I’d forwarded it on…. Oops…. Come along another day…. some great paths by the Lake to rollerskate on!

At last, after lots of work, Light Journeys has launched into cyberspace. Checkout our first feature artist, Melbourne based photographer Georgia Metaxas.

Many thanks to those who submitted and for those who haven’t we are now accepting submissions on a rolling basis. Spread the word and be sure to add us to your feeds or even better, subscribe to keep up with the myriad of amazing work being made by Australian women working in photography.